Blood Ties

by Kay Hooper

  That was when one of the SUVs exploded.

  Dale McMurry both heard and saw the explosion. In fact, he was damn near knocked out of his chair—though that may have been more of a rather drastic flinch on his part than the force of the actual blast.

  Like everybody else, he went running outside and toward the station, so shocked by the very notion of something exploding in this normally very peaceful place that he didn’t think it through.

  Or consider possible consequences.

  Gabriel had just reached the old theater’s projection room when he heard the explosion. And felt the vibration shudder through the old building.

  Shit,

  “Goddammit, Rox, where the hell are the stairs to the roof?” Even though his eyes had adjusted and there was—inexplicably—what appeared to be a dirty skylight far above, he could see no sign of a door or another set of stairs upward.

  Wait… Over there, behind those shelves sticking out into the room.

  A couple of rusted and ancient film cans on one of the shelves mutely proclaimed the reason for its existence in the room, but Gabriel didn’t pause to think very much about it. He found the door right where Roxanne had indicated. It was unlocked, opened easily, and gave access to steep stairs leading up.

  Climbing them swiftly and silently, he breathed, “Can you give me a sense of where he is?”

  I’m still not sure. It feels… weird. Cold. Distant. I should understand what that means, I know I should, but I don’t.

  At the top of the stairs was another door, and it, too, opened easily under his careful hand. No creaking hinges betrayed him, but he was too wary a hunter not to move with exquisite caution. He opened the door just a few inches at first, to give his eyes time to adjust to the late-morning brightness of the rooftop, then eased it farther open.

  Be careful, Gabe.

  “Copy that.” The whisper was automatic; all his attention was focused on the roof.

  It was, for the most part, a flat, tarred roof, various exhaust vents and other pipes sticking up here and there. The stairs had ended on the roof in a kind of dormer, and in the heartbeats it took him to orient himself, Gabriel realized that the front part of the building was behind him.

  And behind the dormer.

  There’s nowhere else he can be, assuming he’s still up here. And he has to still be up here. Unless he’s a damn bird.

  Gabriel would have copied that, but he was concentrating on every careful movement as he eased around the dormer to find the sniper’s vantage point. But the caution proved to be unnecessary.

  “He’s not a bird,” Gabriel said out loud, relaxing and slowly holstering his weapon.

  What the hell?

  Yesterday’s sniper—if the very expensive rifle lying beside him was any indication—half-sat with his back against the four-foot parapet wall, where he had apparently crouched to watch the street below. His legs were splayed apart, his hands limp on either side of his hips. He looked rather like a hunter, wearing faded jeans, much-used hiking boots, and a camo jacket, with a backpack nearby.

  In one limply open hand was a small black box with a simple toggle switch, apparently the detonator he had used to set off his bomb.

  In the other hand was a silenced automatic.

  The hole in his right temple hadn’t bled much, probably because of the gaping exit wound on the left side of his skull—which had. Blood and tissue were spattered all over the sand-colored bricks.

  He was an ordinary-looking man, clean-shaven, with brown hair, and brown eyes that stared sightlessly into eternity.

  Gabe, this doesn’t make sense.

  “You’re telling me.” He kicked the pistol away from that limp hand just to be sure, then hunkered down and reached to check the pulse. As soon as his fingers touched the dead man’s skin, he had to fight not to jerk his hand away in an instinctive reaction.

  “Christ.”

  Gabe?

  “He’s cold, Rox. And I mean really cold. There’s no way he detonated that bomb and then killed himself. This guy’s been dead for hours. Hell, maybe for days.”

  But, what—

  That was when they heard the craa-aack of a rifle.

  From somewhere in the street below.

  They didn’t decide to abandon the cover of the B&B’s shaded yard when the SUV blew, they simply ran toward the sheriff’s department, training and instinct guiding them. Because the explosion was bigger than it should have been, blowing out windows on both sides of the street for more than a block and sending hot chunks of metal and melted plastic in all directions.

  It was impossible to even guess whether anyone had been hurt but easy to see that the damage to surrounding buildings was substantial. Still, human nature being what it was, the SCU team was only about halfway down the hill when townspeople began pouring out of buildings both damaged and whole.

  Hollis heard both Miranda and DeMarco swear, presumably about the curious putting themselves in harm’s way, but she was focused on the flaming hulk that had been a gleaming black SUV.

  The bomb had been of considerable size, if she was any judge. The SUV only vaguely resembled a vehicle, and pieces of it—or of whatever had been inside it, or of the bomb itself—were still raining down, on the streets and on the curious townsfolk who had rushed out to see what happened.

  Hollis turned her attention from the fiery wreck, fighting to ignore the skip in her heartbeat when she saw that DeMarco had gone immediately to the SUV in front, the one that hadn’t exploded, and was moving it away from the burning one. So it wouldn’t blow up from the heat of the other one, she assumed.

  Idiot’s going to get himself killed. Dammit, what if I’d been wrong about only one having a bomb?

  She shoved that thought away and hurried to help the others try to move the people back and out of danger.

  Dale McMurry stopped short yards away from the burning vehicle, staring at it in fascination. He was aware of other people around, of bewildered shouting and curses, of a few folks calling the names of others frantically, but all he could think was, Damn, what a show!

  Like something in the movies. It was incredibly bright and incredibly loud, with bits of still-burning debris showering the street and the sound of glass tinkling almost musically as shards of it fell.

  Entirely forgetting that he was a deputy—even if only a part-time one—he stood there in the middle of the street and watched the show. Watched the sheriff appear from somewhere and begin trying to shepherd people back toward the buildings. Watched the feds arrive, not even out of breath despite running several blocks, and while one of them moved the undamaged—or at least unexploded—SUV away from the burning one, the others joined in the efforts to get people off the street.

  It occurred to Dale only then that the danger might not be over, and he found himself pondering that with a curious detachment. Nothing had hit the SUV; he had been watching, after all. It had just… blown sky-high.

  Which meant it must have had explosives in it.

  A bomb. And that meant that somebody had deliberately set explosives in order to destroy the SUV. And maybe a healthy chunk of Main Street.

  Maybe even a few people.

  That was when Dale wondered, for the first time, if maybe the show wasn’t quite over yet.

  He didn’t even have time to really get scared about that before feeling a tremendous punch to his back, as though a two-by-four had slammed into him. He saw his sweatshirt sort of balloon out from his chest, the pale gray material turning scarlet, and a strange-tasting hot liquid bubbled up in his mouth.

  He didn’t actually see the bullet. But as the world tilted crazily and the pavement reared up to meet him, Deputy Dale McMurry realized he had been shot.

  And it wasn’t anything at all like the movies.

  Diana wasn’t quite sure where she was at first. Oh, she knew she was in the gray time; that was unmistakable. Everything was gray and still and cold and silent. And there was the unsettling odor, faint though it was
, of rotten eggs.

  But where was she within—or outside—the gray time?

  She looked around herself with a frown and finally recognized the place as, oddly, the cramped conference room at the sheriff’s department, where they had sat the evening before, speculating about the case.

  And that was odd because she almost always began a visit to the gray time in the room in which she had been sleeping or had otherwise managed to put herself into a trancelike state.

  Almost always.

  Still frowning, she left that cramped room and moved through the building toward the front door. The empty desks, the round clock—handless and numberless—high on the wall, the silent TV and telephones she passed, all held the eerie qualities of the gray time: the lack of depth or dimension, the lack of color or light or shadow.

  She wondered if she would ever truly get used to it.

  Probably not.

  Probably not supposed to.

  Because even without putting it to the test, Diana believed what she had told the others, that the gray time was not a place or time for the living and that no living thing would be able to exist there except temporarily.

  She walked out the front door of the building and paused, surprised but not sure why. Main Street, town of Serenade. The street looked like streets in the gray time always looked. Like every place in the gray time looked. Eerie. There were vehicles parked here and there, including the two SUVs left for them the night before.

  No people, of course.

  The gray twilight surrounded her. She felt cold and absently rubbed her arms, even though she knew it wouldn’t help. The presence of the two vehicles bugged her, though she wasn’t sure why.

  “Okay, so where’s my guide?” she asked aloud. “I don’t want to wander around in here—out here—with no idea where I’m supposed to go or what I’m supposed to see. Come on, a little help here.”

  As usual, her voice sounded oddly flat, almost hollow.

  After what felt like a long minute or so, she shrugged and continued down the walkway toward the street. She walked around the nearest SUV, sparing it no more than a glance as she passed.

  She paused in the street, wondering where the hell she was supposed to go with no guide—

  “Diana.”

  Finally. She turned to find the same guide who had greeted her the previous night.

  “Brooke. Okay why am I here? I don’t remember falling asleep and, besides, isn’t it the middle of the day?”

  “Is it?”

  “Please, let’s not do the cryptic guide thing, okay?”

  The little girl nodded gravely. “Okay. You came here because you had to, Diana.”

  “And why is that?”

  “I need you to concentrate.”

  “On what? And why?”

  “On Quentin. Reach for him, Diana.”

  “Before I’ve done whatever it is I’ve come here to do?”

  “This is what you’ve come here to do.”

  Diana frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It will. Reach for Quentin. Hold on to the connection the two of you share.”

  Deciding to humor the guide, Diana thought about Quentin, thought about reaching for him. But even as she did, she knew the effort wasn’t a complete one, because she was wary of that connection and used it only when she had to.

  There was a sudden flash, as if lightning brightened the twilight for an instant. And for that instant, Diana had the sense of color and noise and life. Of people around her, and movement.

  Just for an instant.

  Something very similar had happened nearly a year before, when she first met Quentin. When the connection between them began to form, or they both recognized that it had been there for a long time. She still wasn’t quite sure which it was.

  When she began to consciously remember the gray time for the first time in her adult life.

  “Brooke, I don’t—”

  “Diana, you have to try harder.”

  Diana was beginning to feel cold, and not because of the normal chill of the gray time. She concentrated, this time reaching for Quentin with more focus, more will.

  A lightning flash, this one lasting several seconds. The noise was almost deafening, a roar, the sound of thudding feet and loud voices, a curiously musical tinkling, like wind chimes. Or maybe it was glass breaking and falling to strike some solid surface like concrete or asphalt. A wave of heat swept over her, yet she still felt cold.

  Almost at her feet, a young man she vaguely recognized lay on the street. A woman and a man knelt on either side of the young man, and they were pressing what looked like somebody’s yellow shirt against his chest. The yellow material was turning scarlet, and the young man, more blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, stared up into the sky with a look she recognized.

  He was already dead.

  The lightning flash was gone, and she was in the gray time again with only Brooke.

  “That poor kid,” she said. “He’s one of the deputies, I think. What happened?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Am I supposed to?” A nameless unease crawled over her, cold and slithering.

  “Reach for Quentin, Diana. You have to.”

  She was even more reluctant now, but not for the same reasons. Now she wasn’t afraid of the connection. She was afraid of what the connection would show her.

  “You have to,” Brooke insisted.

  Diana braced herself inwardly and then concentrated, reached for Quentin again.

  The bright daylight almost hurt her eyes for a moment or two, and the noise was still deafening, with people running about and shouting, and the SUV burning, and—

  She turned her head a little, more in response to the noise and brightness than out of conscious intent, and that was when she saw. She took a step, and then another. And felt her legs go weak.

  Yards away from where the young man had fallen lay another bleeding body, surrounded by other frantic people trying to stop the bleeding, trying by sheer force of will to hold life in a vessel even her layman’s eye recognized as too damaged to sustain life on its own.

  “Diana! Listen to me—hold on to me. Do you hear? Diana, don’t let go of me. Goddammit, do not let go of me!”

  Quentin’s voice was a hoarse shout, his bloody hands holding one of hers tightly, so tightly, while others on the team worked over her still body.

  She wished she could see his face, but the angle was wrong.

  The bright daylight flickered, dimmed, flickered—and she was back in the gray time, facing Brooke.

  “I’m sorry, Diana.”

  The cold that swept over Diana then was horribly familiar, a chill terror from her childhood, from seeing a beloved mother lying still and silent in a hospital bed and knowing there was no soul inside.

  ‘Oh, shit,” she whispered.

  Nine

  SHERIFF DUNCAN PAUSED in the doorway of the waiting room and then entered hesitantly. “Any word?”

  From her position gazing out one of the big windows that boasted a panoramic view of the mountains in daylight but offered a nighttime view only of the lights of the city below, Miranda said, “She’s still in surgery. They haven’t told us anything yet, good or bad.”

  Duncan wanted to say something about no news being good news, but a check of his watch told him that Diana Brisco had been in surgery way too long for there to be any hope of good news. Nearly twelve hours now; it was well after midnight. She had been airlifted directly from the scene to this major medical center more than fifty miles from Serenade, where one of the best trauma units in the Southeast was, in all probability, her only chance for survival.

  If she had any chance at all, which the EMTs called first to the scene had very clearly doubted.

  He looked at the other two people in the room, noting that Hollis had at least washed the blood off her hands—though a fair amount remained to stain her light-colored sweater—and that DeMarco watched her with an almost im
perceptible frown between his brows.

  Realizing who was missing, the sheriff asked, “Where’s Quentin?”

  Hollis replied, “With Diana.”

  “In surgery?”

  She nodded, staring into space rather than meeting his gaze.

  Again, Duncan found himself groping for words. “I’ve never heard of any hospital or surgeon allowing something like that. Surgeons, especially, are pretty much God in an operating room.”

  DeMarco said, “You didn’t see his face. Even God would have thought twice before trying to separate him from Diana.”

  Miranda turned from the window to say, “Nobody in there is happy about it, but they did the best they could, wrapping Quentin in sterile sheets and dousing whatever they couldn’t cover with antiseptic. There was no time to lose and no sense wasting any of it arguing with him. Especially when it was obvious to everyone what the outcome would be.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t try to knock him out,” Duncan murmured.

  “You didn’t see his face,” DeMarco repeated.

  Duncan really wished he had. “I hope somebody disarmed him” was all he could think of to say.

  “I did.” DeMarco didn’t offer details.

  “How’s the situation in Serenade?” Miranda asked, clearly not all business but making a good show of it.

  “Hell,” the sheriff replied frankly. “Though a bit quieter now than it was all afternoon and most of the evening. Thank God more of your people showed up to lend a hand. We have multiple injuries, damaged buildings with glass and other material still falling into the street if the breeze picks up, state cops and feds and firefighters crawling all over the place, the media crawling all over the place—and a whole lot of terrified people. But of the townsfolk, only the one fatality, so far.”

  “I’m sorry about Dale,” she said.

  “So am I. He was just a kid marking time in a uniform, with nothing special planned for his future. But he should have had more time to find something special for himself.”

  “Yes.” She drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry we brought such tragedy to your town, Des.”